One of the surest ways to establish dramatic tension is to have characters in bad situations who are trying intelligently to solve their problems, failing, and falling into worse situations.
– Cory Doctorow

Whether a story is told on the page or on the screen, the same elements are required. You’ve got to have characters you can identify with, and there’d better be trouble brewing somewhere. Whatever these people’s lives have been before, they’re about to change in a big way. That’s what stories are all about.
– Jenny Wingfield

I think about the characters I’ve created, and then I sit down and start typing and see what they will do. There’s a lot of subconscious thought that goes on. It amazes me to find out, a few chapters later, why I put someone in a certain place when I did. It’s spooky.
– Tom Clancy

Few humans can resist a good story. Stories are rooted in a multitude of personal experiences. A good story invites listeners to compare and contrast their own experience with that of the characters in the story.
– Bryan West

Don’t expect the puppets of your mind to become the people of your story. If they are not realities in your own mind, there is no mysterious alchemy in ink and paper that will turn wooden figures into flesh and blood.
– Leslie Gordon Barnard